The Better Sort (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903)/The Two Faces/Chapter 1
THE TWO FACES
I
The servant, who, in spite of his sealed, stamped look, appeared to have his reasons, stood there for instruction, in a manner not quite usual, after announcing the name. Mrs. Grantham, however, took it up—"Lord Gwyther?"—with a quick surprise that for an instant justified him even to the small scintilla in the glance she gave her companion, which might have had exactly the sense of the butler's hesitation. This companion, a shortish, fairish, youngish man, clean-shaven and keen-eyed, had, with a promptitude that would have struck an observer—which the butler indeed was—sprang to his feet and moved to the chimney-piece, though his hostess herself, meanwhile, managed not otherwise to stir. "Well?" she said, as for the visitor to advance; which she immediately followed with a sharper "He's not there?"
"Shall I show him up, ma'am?"
"But of course!" The point of his doubt made her at last rise for impatience, and Bates, before leaving the room, might still have caught the achieved irony of her appeal to the gentleman into whose communion with her he had broken. "Why in the world not———? What a way———!" she exclaimed, as Sutton felt beside his cheek the passage of her eyes to the glass behind him.
"He wasn't sure you'd see anyone."
"I don't see 'anyone', but I see individuals."
"That's just it; and sometimes you don't see them."
"Do you mean ever because of you?" she asked as she touched into place a tendril of hair. "That's just his impertinence, as to which I shall speak to him."
"Don't," said Shirley Sutton. "Never notice anything."
"That's nice advice from you," she laughed, "who notice everything!"
"Ah, but I speak of nothing."
She looked at him a moment. "You're still more impertinent than Bates. You'll please not budge," she went on.
"Really? I must sit him out?" he continued as, after a minute, she had not again spoken—only glancing about, while she changed her place, partly for another look at the glass and partly to see if she could improve her seat. What she felt was rather more than, clever and charming though she was, she could hide. "If you're wondering how you seem, I can tell you. Awfully cool and easy."
She gave him another stare. She was beautiful and conscious. "And if you're wondering how you seem———"
"Oh, I'm not!" he laughed from before the fire; "I always perfectly know."
"How you seem," she retorted, "is as if you didn't!"
Once more for a little he watched her. "You're looking lovely for him—extraordinarily lovely, within the marked limits of your range. But that's enough. Don't be clever."
"Then who will be?"
"There you are!" he sighed with amusement.
"Do you know him?" she asked as, through the door left open by Bates, they heard steps on the landing.
Sutton had to think an instant, and produced a "No" just as Lord Gwyther was again announced, which gave an unexpectedness to the greeting offered him a moment later by this personage—a young man, stout and smooth and fresh, but not at all shy, who, after the happiest rapid passage with Mrs. Grantham, put out a hand with a frank, pleasant "How d'ye do?"
"Mr. Shirley Sutton," Mrs. Grantham explained.
"Oh yes," said her second visitor, quite as if he knew; which, as he couldn't have known, had for her first the interest of confirming a perception that his lordship would be—no, not at all, in general, embarrassed, only was now exceptionally and especially agitated. As it is, for that matter, with Sutton's total impression that we are particularly and almost exclusively concerned, it may be further mentioned that he was not less clear as to the really handsome way in which the young man kept himself together and little by little—though with all proper aid indeed—finally found his feet. All sorts of things, for the twenty minutes, occurred to Sutton, though one of them was certainly not that it would, after all, be better he should go. One of them was that their hostess was doing it in perfection—simply, easily, kindly, yet with something the least bit queer in her wonderful eyes; another was that if he had been recognised without the least ground it was through a tension of nerves on the part of his fellow-guest that produced inconsequent motions; still another was that, even had departure been indicated, he would positively have felt dissuasion in the rare promise of the scene. This was in especial after Lord Gwyther not only had announced that he was now married, but had mentioned that he wished to bring his wife to Mrs. Grantham for the benefit so certain to be derived. It was the passage immediately produced by that speech that provoked in Sutton the intensity, as it were, of his arrest. He already knew of the marriage as well as Mrs. Grantham herself, and as well also as he knew of some other things; and this gave him, doubtless, the better measure of what took place before him and the keener consciousness of the quick look that, at a marked moment—though it was not absolutely meant for him any more than for his companion—Mrs. Grantham let him catch.
She smiled, but it had a gravity. "I think, you know, you ought to have told me before."
"Do you mean when I first got engaged? Well, it all took place so far away, and we really told, at home, so few people."
Oh, there might have been reasons; but it had not been quite right. "You were married at Stuttgart? That wasn't too far for my interest, at least, to reach."
"Awfully kind of you—and of course one knew you would be kind. But it wasn't at Stuttgart; it was over there, but quite in the country. We should have managed it in England but that her mother naturally wished to be present, yet was not in health to come. So it was really, you see, a sort of little hole-and-corner German affair."
This didn't in the least check Mrs. Grantham's claim, but it started a slight anxiety. "Will she be—a, then, German?"
Sutton knew her to know perfectly what Lady Gwyther would "be," but he had by this time, while their friend explained, his independent interest. "Oh dear, no! My father-in-law has never parted with the proud birthright of a Briton. But his wife, you see, holds an estate in Würtemberg from her mother, Countess Kremnitz, on which, with the awful condition of his English property, you know, they've found it for years a tremendous saving to live. So that though Valda was luckily born at home she has practically spent her life over there."
"Oh, I see." Then, after a slight pause, "Is Valda her pretty name?" Mrs. Grantham asked.
"Well," said the young man, only wishing, in his candour, it was clear, to be drawn out—"well, she has, in the manner of her mother's people, about thirteen; but that's the one we generally use."
Mrs. Grantham hesitated but an instant. "Then may I generally use it?"
"It would be too charming of you; and nothing would give her—as, I assure you, nothing would give me, greater pleasure." Lord Gwyther quite glowed with the thought.
"Then I think that instead of coming alone you might have brought her to see me."
"It's exactly what," he instantly replied, "I came to ask your leave to do." He explained that for the moment Lady Gwyther was not in town, having as soon as she arrived gone down to Torquay to put in a few days with one of her aunts, also her godmother, to whom she was an object of great interest. She had seen no one yet, and no one—not that that mattered—had seen her; she knew nothing whatever of London and was awfully frightened at facing it and at what however little might be expected of her. "She wants some one," he said, "some one who knows the whole thing, don't you see? and who's thoroughly kind and clever, as you would be, if I may say so, to take her by the hand." It was at this point and on these words that the eyes of Lord Gwyther's two auditors inevitably and wonderfully met. But there was nothing in the way he kept it up to show that he caught the encounter. "She wants, if I may tell you so, for the great labyrinth, a real friend; and asking myself what I could do to make things ready for her, and who would be absolutely the best woman in London———"
"You thought, naturally, of me?" Mrs. Grantham had listened with no sign but the faint flash just noted; now, however, she gave him the full light of her expressive face—which immediately brought Shirley Sutton, looking at his watch, once more to his feet.
"She is the best woman in London!" He addressed himself with a laugh to the other visitor, but offered his hand in farewell to their hostess.
"You're going?"
"I must," he said without scruple.
"Then we do meet at dinner?"
"I hope so." On which, to take leave, he returned with interest to Lord Gwyther the friendly clutch he had a short time before received.